What are some of the most "poorly engineered" albu

[emrr]

still though, somebody *did* suggest fresh bass strings on 70s dub. which certainly raised an eyebrow.

That is a funny one.

[progdrums]

Black Sabbath - Never Say Die . By far the worst recorded album ever.
So bad that Ozzy never finished it..LOL
As for Electric Ladyland...for its time..I loved it..remember guys ..it was the early 70's..

[jackson park]

I nominate :

Fleetwod Mac : Tusk.

In the words of the Immortal Rick James :

"Cocaine is a HELL of a drug"

This album fell victim to that drug, along with a host of others in the 70's

Drugs suck.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?!?!?

that album sounds so good it's disgusting. great, strange pop music.

drugs don't ruin albums.

don't get me wrong, i enjoy reading this whole thread, but this is akin to academic painters looking at modern painting and pointing out what looks unrealistic/absurd.

i'm sure i'm preaching to the choir a little bit. yayy

[Nick Sevilla]

I nominate :

Fleetwod Mac : Tusk.

In the words of the Immortal Rick James :

"Cocaine is a HELL of a drug"

This album fell victim to that drug, along with a host of others in the 70's

Drugs suck.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?!?!?

that album sounds so good it's disgusting. great, strange pop music.

drugs don't ruin albums.

don't get me wrong, i enjoy reading this whole thread, but this is akin to academic painters looking at modern painting and pointing out what looks unrealistic/absurd.

i'm sure i'm preaching to the choir a little bit. yayy

I did not say that, they did... and I still like it regardless.

Cheers

[AlexP]

I don't know if it's just a bum version that I've got, but The white stripes "icky thump" has a bunch of peaking all over it - especially on the lead off tune. It sounds like a mastering issue, but I can't see something like that slipping by Jack White. It's a total shame because I love the sounds they're getting - the guitar, the vocals, the kick etc. but I can't listen to something that clips on every quarter note.

[Nick Sevilla]

I don't know if it's just a bum version that I've got, but The white stripes "icky thump" has a bunch of peaking all over it - especially on the lead off tune. It sounds like a mastering issue, but I can't see something like that slipping by Jack White. It's a total shame because I love the sounds they're getting - the guitar, the vocals, the kick etc. but I can't listen to something that clips on every quarter note.

Have you tried playing that CD (or file?) on another player?

Some players start to clip before 0 dBFS, some of them as far down as -3 dBFS.

Cheers

[trevord]

to me; one of most blaring examples of "inappropriate" engineering is the original "Blackheart man" album by Bunny Wailer. It occurred just when digital was hitting the studios ("mix meh digital - i say fe mix me irie") and it is like text book for what was wrong with digital back then.
Not so much as digital is wrong - but how bad it can used especially for a specific genre.
Right before that time - Reggae albums were dripping with analog mojo, because they were mostly track-at-once the whole band came thru and melded in a sort of fuzz like the ganga smoke hanging in the air

But, to me, the Blackheart Man album is the definition of digital brittle-ness, that is super clean highs that really do sound like glass breaking. Inappropriate boosting of the highs in tracks so much so you can even hear tongue clicking in the vocals.

IMHO, the album is totally inappropriate for the genre - maybe its not too bad when compared to todays POP but play something like Natty Dread then Blackheart Man and it jumps right out that something is wrong.

[jeddypoo]

two cents:

nearly every mainstream and many indie rock album from the 90s. Boring, over-hyped, quasi-"natural", bullshit bullshit big rock crap sounds, without the nigh-psychedelic audacity of 80s gated reverb and other ridiculous stuff like that. The sound of boredom and aesthetic uselessness. Unfortunately still a popular way to engineer a record.

[jeddypoo]

Black Sabbath - Never Say Die . By far the worst recorded album ever.
So bad that Ozzy never finished it..LOL
As for Electric Ladyland...for its time..I loved it..remember guys ..it was the early 70's..

I think you mean late 60s

[cgarges]

tnearly every mainstream and many indie rock album from the 90s. Boring, over-hyped, quasi-"natural", bullshit bullshit big rock crap sounds, without the nigh-psychedelic audacity of 80s gated reverb and other ridiculous stuff like that. The sound of boredom and aesthetic uselessness. Unfortunately still a popular way to engineer a record.

Lay it on, man. Give some examples.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[JGriffin]

tnearly every mainstream and many indie rock album from the 90s. Boring, over-hyped, quasi-"natural", bullshit bullshit big rock crap sounds, without the nigh-psychedelic audacity of 80s gated reverb and other ridiculous stuff like that. The sound of boredom and aesthetic uselessness. Unfortunately still a popular way to engineer a record.

Lay it on, man. Give some examples.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

Yeah, this one I'm really very curious about.

[mattdhall]

And by "engineered poorly", I don't necessarily mean "lo-fi", but rather "hi-fi" records that sound like garbage and could have been much better. It can even be music you enjoy. Essentially, good songs (or average songs) ruined by a harsh, out-of-touch mix.

For instance, I enjoy MGMTs Oracular Spectacular in a musical sense, but it seems to cause me so much hearing fatigue that after a few songs I have to switch over to something else. It's so overly compressed, the lyrics are garbled, and the saturation/distortion just seems to be the worst kind in all the wrong places. (I wonder if the vinyl was mastered differently? Doubt it.)

As another example, Radiohead's track "Idioteque" from Kid A also is one of the harshest sounding "popular" recordings I've heard. Some would say that's the point of the song given the lyrics, but it just sucks because I guess I have overly sensitive ears

I wanted to know if anyone else had opinions on this phenomenon!

I think maybe you do have overly sensitive ears. Try the Misfits album Legacy of Brutality. Thing sounds like shit but it's a great record.

[mattdhall]

What about Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges? People have bitched about that one forever and then Iggy goes in remixes it and actually made it worse!

Also there are a lot of would be great records that someone needs to go in and scrape the 80s off of.

Some early Kinks albums could have use a little more TLC imho.

On the other hand a lot of people complain about Exile on Main Street, but I would hate to hear that one any differently.

The Man Who Fell to Earth sounds like a demo for what could be a great album. Just a little - unfinished...

If I had a time machine I would go to Jamaca in the 70s and take a couple hundred packs of fresh bass strings.

I could go on forever!

I generally aim for The Stooges or early Kinks sound. There are people who don't like that?
I think of Raw Power as a point of reference from a production standpoint. It sounds fantastic in the way it was supposed to. It's beyond overdriven. Listen to Primal Scream's track Accelerator from XTRMNTR for a good point of reference on that track's influence.

[jeddypoo]

tnearly every mainstream and many indie rock album from the 90s. Boring, over-hyped, quasi-"natural", bullshit bullshit big rock crap sounds, without the nigh-psychedelic audacity of 80s gated reverb and other ridiculous stuff like that. The sound of boredom and aesthetic uselessness. Unfortunately still a popular way to engineer a record.

Lay it on, man. Give some examples.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

Yeah, this one I'm really very curious about.

Stone Temple Pearl Jam In Chains, 2nd Nirvana album, 90s Sloan and other powerpop like Matthew Sweet and stuff, Versus, uh...I dunno. The 90s sound. But I admit I'm pretty prejudiced against anything recorded after 1982 or so. I like 50s and 60s recordings, 70s punk sounds (Adverts/early Misfits comes to mind), early 80s Postcard/Creation/C86/Factory type stuff (orange juice, Josef K, Joy Division, JAMC), Flying Nun/New Zealand stuff (The Clean, The Bats, The Chills, Tall Dwarfs) and 4-track stuff like GBV. I mean honestly maybe as a lover of old/weird/cheap/fucked-up recordings I really shouldn't be giving my two cents on engineering, but there, I did. Albini is def a good example of someone who used modern technology in an aesthetically pleasing way in the 90s- love the sound of the Breeder's "Pod" in particular, but y'know....a lot records from the past 20 years have zero personality. It's a weird idea to think you're getting some sort of natural, realistic sound when really you're trying to make every single instrument audible. That's not only not realistic, but it doesn't sound cool.

Okay sorry. Not only did I shit on an entire decade, but I invoked Albini. I just feel like even now, I hear bands with decent songs that record them in the most offensively bland way imaginable. In a way I'm really enjoying the Garageband boom for that reason. Even if the songs aren't always great, I dig the fucky sounds.
And we all know great songs are always in short supply. But hell, even Gordon Lightfoot had cool muted snare drums on his cheezewhiz.

[JGriffin]

tnearly every mainstream and many indie rock album from the 90s. Boring, over-hyped, quasi-"natural", bullshit bullshit big rock crap sounds, without the nigh-psychedelic audacity of 80s gated reverb and other ridiculous stuff like that. The sound of boredom and aesthetic uselessness. Unfortunately still a popular way to engineer a record.

Lay it on, man. Give some examples.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

Yeah, this one I'm really very curious about.

Stone Temple Pearl Jam In Chains, 2nd Nirvana album, 90s Sloan and other powerpop like Matthew Sweet and stuff, Versus, uh...I dunno. The 90s sound. But I admit I'm pretty prejudiced against anything recorded after 1982 or so. I like 50s and 60s recordings, 70s punk sounds (Adverts/early Misfits comes to mind), early 80s Postcard/Creation/C86/Factory type stuff (orange juice, Josef K, Joy Division, JAMC), Flying Nun/New Zealand stuff (The Clean, The Bats, The Chills, Tall Dwarfs) and 4-track stuff like GBV. I mean honestly maybe as a lover of old/weird/cheap/fucked-up recordings I really shouldn't be giving my two cents on engineering, but there, I did. Albini is def a good example of someone who used modern technology in an aesthetically pleasing way in the 90s- love the sound of the Breeder's "Pod" in particular, but y'know....a lot records from the past 20 years have zero personality. It's a weird idea to think you're getting some sort of natural, realistic sound when really you're trying to make every single instrument audible. That's not only not realistic, but it doesn't sound cool.

Okay sorry. Not only did I shit on an entire decade, but I invoked Albini. I just feel like even now, I hear bands with decent songs that record them in the most offensively bland way imaginable. In a way I'm really enjoying the Garageband boom for that reason. Even if the songs aren't always great, I dig the fucky sounds.
And we all know great songs are always in short supply. But hell, even Gordon Lightfoot had cool muted snare drums on his cheezewhiz.

Interesting. To me, those early grunge records (Pearl Jam especially, but Nirvana, Alice In Chains etc.) sound like they were recorded by guys who'd just spent the better part of the last ten years recording big 80s hair metal and still considered that the way to make a record. The Matthew Sweet record on the other hand sounds completely different to me (according to legend there are no outboard reverbs on that disc at all). In any event, no need to apologize -- your taste in music is your taste in music. But I can see why you don't like that sound.